Charlie Cunniff, with the OED’s Seattle Climate Partnership, told a recent Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce meeting that any business with a parking lot could host one parking spot with a plug-in. Cunniff says the business could promote it as a benefit for customers to charge up while shopping.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded a $115 million grant to Phoenix-based ECOtality to manage the EV Project, installing 15,000 charging stations in 16 cities in six states, including Washington. ECOtality, which has been in the electric vehicle charging business for 20 years, matched the government grant, for a total of $230 million for this pilot project.

“The electric vehicles are here, it’s not the future, and there needs to be a charging infrastructure for people to charge outside their homes and at their homes as well,” Dan O’Shea, Washington State sales manager for ECOtality, explained. “Within the next three to five years, 80 percent of all car manufacturers are going to have at least one electric vehicle.”

O’Shea, who lives in Phinney Ridge, says his company plans to install about 2,000 EV chargers from Olympia to Everett. About 900 of those will be in the homes of people who agree to have their data shared as part of the pilot project, to help the DOE determine where to install additional chargers, and to understand the habits of EV drivers.

“Western Washington and Seattle are an important part” of the project, he said.